Day 4091 of the 7 day Bible verse challenge.

Psalm 38:3 KJV

What is unrest?

Is it a decidedly civil matter measured more often in incivility than elsewise? Is it a cancer considered of a culture in which chaos and confusion define the common delusion? Is it a lack of peace proven always amongst a people as a whole? Is it a hole that perhaps a lone person can sink into all by themselves? Is it a collective of those who buy this collection of lies this world sells seeking to keep us on edge and there at each other’s throats? Is it notes played or sung in song shouted by those who agree to give their lives unto singing along without knowing the lines or reasons?

Is it a changing of seasons showing that life is growing toward wherever life’s going?

Is it a rut, routine, retinue or revenue that we’ll eventually come to regret having gotten so used to?

Indeed, I think it is something better proven in feelings such as guilt and regret and the remorse which determines the course set by such harrowing and hollowing emotions. It’s this sense of something being off, something not being right, someone not being right. And sadly that someone is often us because, well, often in life we’re the ones not doing right. A fact which then causes life to feel too as if it’s not going right. And that because we’re the ones living it and thus haven’t within it any real way to blame anyone else.

Now that’s definitely not to say that those around can’t cause such disquiet within us as I think we could all agree that they most certainly can. I mean, just look at the shape this world’s currently in! There are all sorts of things being said and done and insisted we care about that, honestly, we’d all be far better off not knowing anything about. I in fact cannot count the number of times within a single day in which my seeking for better asks that I turn away from looking or listening to something because said something’s causing something inside of me that I just don’t need.

And yet this turning is something we spend our entire lives learning as, well, we’ve spent the part up until now not really doing anything of the sort.

Rather for all our years along the way to wherever we are now, we’ve kind of just agreed to allow the winds of want, worry, weirdness and wickedness to just sort of blow us wherever they wanted us. Indeed, it seems as though all of us know impressively little in regard to matters such as resolve, reason, personal responsibility even.

Why?

Because such aren’t the things that this world wants for us to know as, well, they be things that would otherwise insist, and sometimes firmly so, that this world a whole agree to go where it sits clear this world wishes not to be. For sadly it seems that this world is quite content right where it sits. So much so in fact that most of those around us sit too right where they are, often changing nothing about the scenery they see having decided rather sternly it seems to seek for nothing better of all the better that we all can still be.

And it’s this sight we see and hear inside of every single day anymore. And seeing that now general giving up, hearing the cries of those who haven’t it in them any longer to try for anything more anymore, feeling inside ourselves that still small voice turn slowly into a measurably more grieved yell, it’s, as far as I can tell, it’s the closest thing to hell that any of us should ever hope to know.

Because we just weren’t built to get so low as we have anyway.

Rather we were created, called, commissioned even to become the very children of Heaven, lights sat atop hills holding out hope for all those at the end of their own rope to see that it needn’t be that way. That there was a better way aimed at a better day than the sum of everything good and decent we mostly have to pretend we continue to find in our common descent spent away from who, what, where it was that we once hoped to be.

Indeed, we were created of God and given the challenge of looking the same. But alas we’ve long since traded in His image for one made of all manner of personal idealism as designed inside all measure of idolatry, indecency, idiocy, illiteracy and other academic insufficiency, immorality, immodesty, dishonesty, debauchery, distrust, disruption, disquiet, debate, denial and that of literally anything we don’t elsewise feel instantly the need to agree with.

Which, sadly, is these days only those things which dare to contend that we could be doing far better than we are.

No, long since removed are those days in which we’d do as asked and endure the sound teachings sat before us seeking there to lead us closer to He from whom they came.

Again, we’re seemingly a people vastly more content with the content of where, who, whatever we are currently.

Why?

Because we’ve grown so used to the unrest, both that unfolding around us and that always at home unraveling that which was at once within us that we’re anymore rather unbothered by it all. In fact, I don’t know that we even remember that there’s always been another option. A different path. A story told not in glory to hold but rather the same to give as is given another seeking from the same the sort of salvation that it seems most here still don’t realize we need.

Why?

Because we’ve grown so used to the unrest both around us and within us that such is now life to us.

And we don’t know what we’d have were we to find that we did lay down a life, even if that one lain down is this one we’re living now in which there’s so much unrest and disquiet and the two combined into that defined as such a void of peace that it’s amazing anyone wants anything to do with this place.

Alas so many do because this place is where they are. And since to them seeing remains believing, well then they’re trapped inside this tarp made of a generally accepted lack of trying for anything better to be the very best thing that anyone can do in life.

Yes, we’re walking in a world that quit years ago.

But having long been understudies of those going under in that way, so too then have we the same to say!

That we too gave up. That we settled and that short. That we, for whatever reason or reward, refused any further agreement with personal responsibility and now simply exist outsourcing such a royalty to whomever around us wishes to take said load off of us.

Yes, we’ve allowed weakness to become us in what have become lives worried about that which wearies us as if to be weary and worn remains somehow the worst thing bestowed upon those born.

My friends, how is that?

How is it supposed to be such a grand outcome for our to somehow come out of this life entirely unscathed? How on earth can we even imagine such a thing considering how we see, again within every single day, the very sum of nearly everything that shouldn’t be said or done? How can we not be bothered by what this world’s become? How can we be unworried about who we’ve become?

How can we be so spiritually dumb and emotionally numb that we can look ourselves in the mirror and continue rehearsing the smiles that we know are only there because the world around us wants to see them simply because, to them, our all smiling and laughing seems to prove that nothing’s going wrong, we’ve none of us anything to lose?

Or maybe the smiles are truths and we indeed haven’t anything remaining left to lose having already lost it all.

And indeed, I think this may be the path on which we finally find ourselves on to something. For truly, it does in fact seem as if we have lost nearly everything of anything we may still be unaware of all we once were or could have been or should have become by now had we not become only numb and dumb to every better that we clearly are not.

A clarity screamed from the very seams which sow us together inside these bodies wrapped in stuff we seem to care more about than that housed inside and thus, as not seen, is mostly forgotten.

Indeed, we remain a people who look only upon the surface of both ourselves and one another. And, again, so long as we see a smile then we’re willing to accept that at face value as we want for everyone to feel good, to be happy, to have hope and know it so close that we can walk away from them knowing they’ll not miss finding it.

Alongside a growing disinterest in walking with them toward it, maybe even having to learn something of hope ourselves along the way.

No, we all know what hope is, what life is, what all this means, where all it goes, where all we’ve been and somehow that there’s nothing but glory and gain to be found in the stories we’ve lived so far.

Or at least so goes the lies we live for.

Each one chosen because it drowns out the discrepancies designed inside how we’ve chosen to live our lives. Each one appreciated as it talks over the truths spoken of who we are and how it’s nothing at all of anything we ever wanted to be. Each one loved because it allows us the ease of seeming to believe that we love our lives and are fully content with however we’re living them.

A lie chosen because it frees us from doing any more work, any more learning, any more losing within them.

No, we’ve become so transfixed by having that we’re now just willing to keep whatever it is that we have, stay whoever we are, remain wherever we are even if all the above are nothing anywhere close to anything we know of better being still. Indeed, all of us would just as soon remain filled with regret, buried by guilt, carrying the very weight of every wrong and their every mistake we’ve ever come to make than even admit we’ve settled for doing so.

An admittance aimed at doing so no longer.

No, we clearly wish not to welcome such change in our lives as it seems our fear of change has designed a reluctance the same which asks us every hour of every day to do away with anything, with anyone who dares to say that they see beyond the smiles and hear something else beneath the laughter. That they feel this sadness about us that is only palpable unto those who know what it looks like, sounds like, feels like.

And that only because they were once where we are, in a place so broken and bleeding and betrayed, and that by themselves alone, that they too, having reached the bottom and found no rock to be there waiting, they determined to do something different to the tune of losing everything that caused them to think the rock at rock bottom was a diamond in disguise.

It isn’t my friends. Rather the rock of rock bottom is but the last lie that we’re willing to listen to.

It’s the final straw in a life drunk on delight and every lie we needed to hear that told us that whatever we were doing, whoever it was that we were becoming and have become was everything we should have ever hoped to be.

It’s the looking in a mirror and not recognizing the stranger you see looking back. Sure, they seem at least vaguely familiar but no, no they’re just the stranger that’s insisted upon the anger, the danger, the veritable destruction of all you ever hoped to be, hoped to have, hoped to know of a life that’s gone wherever every life goes that we decide not to live in exchange for the one that we did.

I wonder often of the life I didn’t find because of this line I chose instead. What could have been done with all the time I wasted upon a worthless college education that’s become both a massive financial burden and that so massive because it didn’t accomplish the career I’d once imagined I wanted? What could have become of the friends I don’t have because I made so many friends with so many strangers waiting to prove they weren’t my friends after all? Indeed, what could have been that family I grew up hoping for, praying for, dreaming of that I dealt away inside every day and all those nights in which I settled for lies told in lust?

This is unrest.

It’s the sum of a past shouting into the present every reminder of every wrong turn we’ve taken that have collectively cost us the better life we could have been living all along. It’s the book written by a persona we put on, a pseudonym of sorts, the alias of one gone incognito as they opted for a stage name over their own, and a life’s story similar. It’s the sum of all we’ve become and how, in honesty, very little of it is anything we wish to be.

It’s every dream that still keeps us up at night as they’re all we seem to live through anymore as most of our days remain nightmares that we can’t seem to escape.

And each of us know something of this unrest. Each of us know something of unhappiness. Each of us know plenty of regret and hopefully too the guilt which makes it what it is.

Question is do we know anything of the remorse to which both are meant to guide? Do we know anything of the audacity to come out of our hide? Do we care at all to know anything of life?

Or are we truly willing to accept the sum of everything we are, everything we have, all of it exchanged for everything better we can still be?

Guess it comes down to just how convinced we are that life as it is is what all it should be. Is the person you see looking back in your reflection the person you want to be or just a hollowed out version built of dreams already gone and plans still smoldering? Is the life you’re living one in which you can find peace, even if for a moment in what remains a world entirely insistent upon stealing such a joy from us all just as soon as it sees we have any to take away? Are any of the plans you make made for improvements to your life, to yourself?

Have you left any of those promises you once made yourself?

Promises to do your best and never settle for anything less? Promises to chase down hope no matter how hard it is to find nor how much harder it proves to hold? Promises to be there for those around us, proven in a willingness to do whatever you have to in order to make sure that you can? Promises to never go back again to those days spent in ways that you still can’t bring yourself to talk about?

Promises to find out who you are and why you’re here?

Promises we’ve each broken more times than we can remember.

Again, that is unrest. It’s the sum of our past speaking still of all the times we could have tried but chose against it. It’s the sound of everything better we could have had, could have been but chose not to have, not to be in exchange for what we did, for who we are. It’s the scream of a soul asking us to not let go of the hope it knows.

It’s looking around at a world that’s given up and realizing that, having walked in step with the same, so too then have we given up, given away everything we could have been, should have been had we not been so worried about what the world thought was best for us to be, to see, to have, to hope for, in, toward.

And I’m tired of not knowing anything but what this world is and what all ways in which the same has all but destroyed my life thus far. I’m tired of knowing the shame, the guilt, the regret we get in walking alongside a world so clearly not going anywhere we want to be. I’m tired of the anger, the sadness, the disappointment and how they’re all aimed only at me because it’s always been me who decided to give up, give away everything that I could have been.

I’ll not quit again.

That’s the newest promise that I promised to both God and myself last week as I stood weeping at a window looking out on the fulfillment of a prayer my family and I have had for years mixed with a rekindled hope that I honestly thought was long since dead having all but killed it myself.

No, we may fail in upholding His will and doing so will wreck us in ways that we may not know for years.

But thankfully His will won’t fail us, even if it has to wreck us in order to help us finally realize just how far we’ve wandered away from it.

That’s the unrest.

It’s met in His quiet reminders that we were made for more than we’ve settled for. In His truth meeting us where we are but with not any intention of leaving us there. In His Word speaking life to bones we didn’t know were quite so dead as they were, are perhaps. In His Son suffering in our place, showing us face-to-face the misery we deserve mixed with the mercy that not one of us can. In His promise of Heaven being our home, a freedom then given from our continually living as if we need anything in, of this world.

We don’t.

This world is just everything wrong, everything wicked, everything that’s already gone.

Let it go and I promise that so too shall fade with it every ounce of unrest, of unhappiness, of hopelessness that you’ve managed to find in your life thus far.

For we weren’t created to know those things so much as we do. In truth, we only know them so much as we do because God’s still patient with us and is thus still doing for us everything He can to turn us away from everything we’ve become.

Even allowing us to meet with the misery that is shame, regret, guilt, the glaring lack of peace and hope always to be proven in all the above.

All because nothing inspires us to move forward better than feeling only death where we are.

He created us to know hope, to have peace, to experience love and life and the both combined inside such a joy that I dare say few of us know. And He won’t stop picking at us, pestering us, pointing out every flaw and failure and foolishness within us until we either agree to do something about them or we just finally prove that no amount of time or patience will ever help us choose to.

Indeed, it is a choice my friends. We can either let this lack of peace we’ve found, this lack of love we see, this loss of life we feel be the end of the story or we can finally try to understand that so long as we’re so miserable as to be lacking still any of those things, that such is only evidence that we need to move on from the place we are toward that place where those things aren’t missed anymore.

Let the anger, the sadness, the disappointment move you toward that life in which you can feel a soundness in your flesh as you finally take up the fight to please God rather than anger Him.

That life in which you do have rest in your bones, in your soul because you know that yes, those who suffer in the body are done with sin.

Be done with it my friends!

For it will never bring us anything we wish to have nor anywhere we’d ever want to be.

After all, what is life without peace?

#LeaveNoSoulUntold